SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter often feels like the digital equivalent of a swamp. The Russians used the platform to disrupt the 2016 election. Famous people buy fake followers to make themselves seem more famous. Prominent members of the chattering class have been signing off for good.

If you’ve already forgotten about those New Year’s resolutions, here’s an easy way to check off two of them. Fix your finances by reading more. We asked NerdWallet’s money experts what books they recommend for achieving common financial goals.

For most teens, financial planning is a topic far from top of mind. School, sports, and social activities take priority while managing credit, creating a budget, and saving for retirement feels like a long way off.

INSIDER-TRADING prosecutions have netted plenty of small fry. But many grumble that the big fish swim off unharmed. That nagging fear has some new academic backing, from three studies. One argues that well-connected insiders profited even from the financial crisis.

U.S. stock markets fell sharply Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling more than 1,000 points, or 4 percent. The market is still trying to find its footing after Monday's huge meltdown, when the Dow fell 1,175 points — a one-day record.

Last spring I picked up “Your Money or Your Life,” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, because I heard it had recently helped one man make a fortune. Originally published in 1992, the seminal personal finance book teaches a nine-step, systemic approach to money management that was created by Mr.

On the surface, personal finance seems to be primarily about money: getting rich and optimizing your investments and so on. It’s definitely about all of that stuff, but in a larger, more important way, it has nothing to do with money at all.

Read enough financial advice and you can start to get the sense that any mistake or flaw in your financial life is catastrophic. In fact the opposite is true. Not only is it okay to be imperfect, but you can turn even the worst disaster around.

If you go looking for financial advice, you’ll find tons of it. Heck, we’ve even got our own blog devoted to it. However, if you’re looking to make a change to your financial life, you probably already know where to start.

Meb Faber asked a bunch of us bloggers to give him our top 3-5 most read blog posts of the year. I looked back at my trusty Google Analytics for the first time in a while and discovered that two of my top three in terms of readership were personal finance-related posts.

We’re all victims in the race to gain more status. Society pressures us to have a bigger house, a nicer car, and more toys. If your rush to gain status starts with buying stuff, however, you might want to rethink your strategy.

The snowball method is the best way to pay down your debt. If you’re skeptical and want to see how it will work, this spreadsheet will calculate exactly how long it will take to be debt free. It makes logical sense to pay off your highest interest rate debts first. Yet research shows that…

It’s not too hard to build a basic budget, and a few tips and tricks can help you make it really solid. But even a good budget can go awry. There are a handful of mistakes that throw people off, but the good news is: these mistakes are easy enough to fix.

Money management isn’t easy, but we do our best to break it down for you. Here are some of our best personal finance guides, primers, and explainers of 2016. Spend less than you earn, save your money, and—poof!—your financial problems are solved. If only it were this easy.

Today my four-week challenge is over, and I’m excited to tell you that (in my opinion) the project has been a huge success. Not only did the “startup” make money (not thousands, but a respectable amount given my constraints), but I also learned a whole new facet of selling online.

We've featured a lot of tips from The Simple Dollar's Trent Hamm—from buying in bulkand earning money online to managing a career hiatusand overcoming decision fatigue. Here, he shares his ten most important pieces of financial advice. This post originally appeared on The Simple Dollar.

Skills are the gateway to a better quality career and life. The problem is, money is tight for most of us after covering rent/mortgage, car payments, and just maintaining our quality of life. But don’t worry, there are many ways for you to acquire new skills without breaking the bank.

One of the most interesting things I’ve found over the years of writing about personal finance, charting my own financial progress and changes, and talking with countless readers is that personal finance is a lot like an onion. An onion? Yep, it’s all about layers.

A while back, I was asked to give an hourlong presentation where I talked about my key principles of personal finance. I chose to give a presentation where each slide was available for about a minute with one simple rule on each slide, giving me a minute to discuss that rule.

When you start getting your finances in order, it’s exciting. You see the basic concepts and rules of personal finance in action, and, after a while, they start to pay off. This makes it easy to become a personal finance devotee. But even the best financial advice can become counterproductive.

The start of the year is a great time to review and revamp our financial plans, including common resolutions like "save more money" or "pay down debt." Here are some ways to develop better money habits for all year round. True savings happen when we deviate from our habits.

Are you vowing to get ahead financially in 2017 but not exactly sure how? Some expert advice can help. The key, though, is to get information you can trust. GOBankingRates asked 17 of the most well-known names in personal finance and entrepreneurship to share their No.

You don’t have to learn everything about money at once, but a course can teach you a lot of useful information at a reasonable pace. Especially if you never learned personal finance to begin with, a course will help you get up to speed on the basics.

Warren Buffett is a hugely successful investor, and his tips for investing are surprisingly accessible. Most of his methods are simple, straightforward and timeless. Here's some of Buffett's best money advice. Buffett warns against excessive borrowing.

When you’re drowning in debt, managing your personal finances probably seems downright impossible. You read all these headlines about investing and financial independence and you just want to give up, because you’re so far from that.

People always seem have questions about their financial priorities: Should I invest or pay off debt? Save in my work 401(k) or open an IRA? This cheat sheet will tell you. It helps you visualize your financial priorities in the most basic terms.

Knowing how to make money doesn’t mean you know how to save it, as is evidenced by a startling statistic reported on by Polly Mosendz at Bloomberg: According to a new survey of 7,052 people by the financial-services site GoBankingRates, nearly half of people earning between $100,000 and $149,999

Every time you go through the day and wind up behind, you tell yourself “Tomorrow will be better.” Then you go to sleep with no idea how you’re going to accomplish that. If you want to break the cycle, start on tomorrow today.

Getting rid of debt is a math problem. You need to develop a long-term plan that will reduce your debt over time until it’s eliminated. However, it’s also a lifestyle choice, and that’s something you need to anticipate.

Amid record amounts of capital raised by VCs worldwide, and a sharp rise in the number of private “unicorns” valued at $1 billion-plus, there has been a quiet, barely noticed implosion in early-stage VC activity worldwide. The chart below is dramatic, and accurate.

Last week a received a call from a reporter from VICE named Allie Conti, who is setting out on a journey to learn about managing money. Like many of her fellow Millennials, Ms. Conti doesn’t have much experience with the markets, investing or even general personal finance:

Many people don’t invest because it seems overly complicated. But if you want to build wealth, investing now is the easiest way to do so—and anyone can do it. Here are some basic steps to set up a simple, beginner investment portfolio that will make you money while you sleep.

When anxious young couples ask whether they are doing enough to secure their finances, my answer is standard: By the time you are 40, you will be surprised how well you are doing. There is something about turning 40.

When it comes to making financial progress, we can all agree that saving for the future is a critical part of the equation. But how much are you supposed to be socking away exactly? This post originally appeared on LearnVest.

You spend more time with your own failures than anyone else on Earth. Eventually, you might internalize them and come to fear failure. However, for everyone else, they barely know your failures even exist. In high school, our hockey coach was a demigod.

I remember when I got my first credit card. I felt like a real adult. I was just so excited to get this shiny, small square of money that would let me buy anything I wanted. That is until I realized that I didn’t actually know how to use it (beyond swiping it when checking out, of course).

In Investors and their incentives, I tried to give a broad breakdown of the incentives that drive the major types of startup investors. I want to dig deeper into a behavior that VCs sometimes exhibit which seems strange from the point of view of founders.

Most people cringe to see the words “money” and “happiness” in the same sentence, and rightfully so. Money doesn’t equal happiness. You can, however, use money in a way that satisfies your own values. To find those values, it helps to consider your happiest moments.

A few days ago, the value of all the bitcoins in the world blew past $1 billion for the first time ever. That’s an impressive achievement, for a purely virtual currency backed by no central bank or other authority.

We talk a lot about personal finance. And while there are always new ways of thinking about your budget, you can always quickly identify the rules that matter most: they're the ones that don't change. There's a fundamental flaw with lots of financial advice: it assumes you have money.

Since we tend to decide that it’s rude to talk about money with other people, it can be hard to figure out how to go from being broke to financially stable. This spreadsheet can help you explore the difference.

If you have credit card debt, you probably already know paying it off is the best thing you can do for your personal finances. What you may not understand is that it's the best possible financial return on your money, even taking savings into account. Here's why.

Money isn’t as complicated as it seems, but when your finances are out of control, managing money does indeed seem overwhelming. To get started, here’s the first thing you should do, according to one financial planner.

Personal finance is like nutrition: It seems like the experts in this arena can’t agree on anything, whether it’s setting up an emergency fund or paying off your mortgage early. Despite all the contrasting opinions, though, most people agree on at least five basic fundamentals.

Lisa Pollack at FT Alphaville mulls a question: “Why are we so good at creating complexity in finance?” The answer she comes up with is the ““, basically the idea that there is an uptrend in human intelligence.

It takes commitment and time, but you can learn to manage your money even when there's not much of it. Follow these steps to set up a budget if you're broke. We've discussed how to create a basic, real-world budget, but that advice often doesn't apply when you're struggling to make ends meet.

We've talked about the virtues of having an emergency fund. However, as finance blog The Simple Dollar highlights, money in an emergency fund is money that's not in your investment portfolio. So, how much should you keep in it?

When we talk about financial independence, we often emphasize how important passive income is. Passive income makes money for you without effort. However, it can actually be worth more, dollar for dollar.

When the tech bubble burst around the turn of the millennium, it proved we had a lot more to learn about the digital economy. With many entrepreneurial workers unemployed, many learned how to become entrepreneurs online. This brought the advent of the personal finance blogger.

Personal finance is simple, but it isn’t easy. Our greedy brains try to fight us every step of the way—which is why automating your finances is such a great way to save money. Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, puts everything you need to know in one simple graphic.

Much of the financial industry was built around the needs and demands of people already in it. But the recession, if anything, was a wake-up call to investors and insiders alike that such a system is vulnerable. The majority of U.S.

Last month we made the case for why Millennials could become the next Greatest Generation of personal finance. According to the Strauss-Howe generational cycle theory, members of Generation Y parallel and share traits with the young people who came of age during the Great Depression.

How you manage, spend, and invest your money can have a profound impact on your life, yet very few schools teach these important skills. Learning financial savvy can take a while, but the basics are fairly simple and never change. Here’s where to get started.

Money management can be intimidating, but the first step to facing your financial anxiety is coming to terms with your own financial picture. If you’re not sure where to start, spend just one minute each day looking at your finances.

At first, it seems kind of weird that a financial planner should urge you to “just spend the money,” but that’s what I like about author and Certified Financial Planner Carl Richards. He reminds us that money isn’t some vague goal you should work toward. It’s just a tool.

Seven months ago I transitioned out of a corporate job in market research to work for myself full-time. By the time I left my day job to become a personal finance coach, I had nine clients, $22,000 in savings to cover my living expenses and $5,000 in a business account. This is how I did it.

Money issues can be tough to tackle. You feel like you have limited control over your finances, and that can be hugely discouraging. So we want to know—how do you stay motivated with your financial goals? Experts recommend different tips for making your goals easier to swallow.

Goldman Sachs has been particularly active in the last 2 years, backing 4 unique companies applying AI in financial technology. Deals and dollars to startups using AI algorithms reached record levels in 2016.

When you see a few dishes in the sink, you don’t stress over it because it’s not critical. You can get it later. When you come back in a couple days, the sink is overflowing. Now it’s a drain on your energy to do a basic task. Next time, kill the beast while it’s still a babe.

One of the easiest personal finance tips out there is to simply stop wanting more stuff. It’s simple, but it’s true–if you had an easy way to basically eliminate your desire to acquire anything new aside from things to cover your barest needs, personal finance would become incredibly easy.

If your finances suck, you’ve probably picked up a book or two on how to manage your money. You’ve probably read, and even tried, to put the advice into practice. But the most important money skill isn’t one you’ll find in a book.

Managing your money and budgeting can be a daunting task, even if you're a spreadsheet ninja. Corralling accounts, watching your money move, and keeping track of everything can be tough, but there are personal finance tools that make the job much easier.

When we need suggestions or advice, we typically lean on those around us for tips. However, when it comes to personal finance, this strategy can backfire for one simple reason: most people you know aren't finance experts.

Twenty-somethings have the time and strength but not enough money to buy and do things they want. Retirees can have enough money, but have the least time and strength. Thus they say “life begins at 40.

When you’re trying to get your finances together, there’s usually a question of trade-off. Do I pay off debt or save for an emergency? Do I save for retirement or a home down payment? Fidelity’s 50/15/5 rule addresses the most important financial goals by allocating your paycheck accordingly.

While I love writing and talking about all of the benefits of financial independence and financial progress, I’ll be the first to admit that the path is difficult. Although the ideas behind personal finance are easy, actually putting them into practice is incredibly hard.

Living off dividends is the dream for many investors. If you have enough saved and properly invested, you can take home a comfortable salary without working at all. This calculator will help estimate how much you’ll need to accomplish this goal.

Spend less than you earn is the golden rule of personal finance. It's incredibly simple, but it's not easy. Your brain likes to get in the way by tricking you to go against what you know to be true. Here's how your brain sabotages your finances, and how you can overcome those tendencies.

Looking back on my life a decade ago, I just wasn’t taking care of myself. I was overweight, deeply in debt, a smoker, junk-food addict, stressed out, clutter piling up all around me, I didn’t floss … my life was a mess.

Like many people who suddenly realize how bad their financial situation is, we dove hard into frugality during the first few months of our financial turnaround.It makes sense, really. Frugality is the best personal finance tactic there is for seeing immediate results.

Too many people, including plenty of brand-new college graduates, fall far behind on their student loan payments for no good reason. How many? The Department of Education does not supply much data on late payments.

With the stock market constantly rising and falling, it’s hard to predict what kind of luck you’ll have when you retire and how much you should be saving so you don’t run out of money. One financial expert, however, has found the magic retirement savings rates for most people.

American economist Hyman Minsky, who died in 1996, grew up during the Great Depression, an event which shaped his views and set him on a crusade to explain how it happened and how a repeat could be prevented, writes Duncan Weldon.

Only recently has it become possible to fully automate your expenses. However, finance blog I Heart Budgets proposes taking this idea a step further: by automating all of your finances, you can effectively live "money free." The concept is so simple it almost doesn't feel like it's possible.

As you approach adulthood and start to think about your future, are you ready to be financially responsible for yourself? If you answered yes, congratulations—you’re ahead of the game! But if you answered no, don’t worry—there’s still plenty of time to set yourself up for success.

If you've ever paid money for something and then found out others have gotten the same thing for free, you've probably kicked yourself. We want to know: what items do people typically spend money on without realizing they can get them for free? Here's an example.

You have a 401(k) from an old employer that you haven't looked at in weeks, a high-interest credit card you've been meaning to do something about for months, and cash sitting in your checking account that's doing nothing.

Last week, personal finance site Financial Samurai posted a blog that went viral: Scraping By On $500,000 A Year: Why It’s So Hard For High Income Earners To Escape The Rat Race. If $500,000 is “scraping by,” it’s time for some serious financial literacy.

Ever wished you could peek at the spending habits of someone with the same salary as you? We asked three brave writers to reveal just that—their salaries, budgeting strategies, and financial goals for the year.

Rules of thumb can be a good approximate guideline for decisions, and there are tons of money rules that aim to get your finances on track. While everyone's situation is different, these serve as a good starting point.

We talk a lot about personal finance here at Lifehacker. But if you're living paycheck to paycheck, getting out of debt and starting a successful budget may seem impossible. The Simple Dollar's Trent Hamm has been there. Here's his advice on how to break the cycle and live a happier financial life.